Wordsmiths get own ‘funplex’ in revised Merriam-Webster

Merriam-Webster managed to cram 10,000 new words into its latest collegiate dictionary, available today in bookstores and the first revised edition in a decade.

Words are cheap, too. Priced at $30, the volume contains 225,000 definitions. That boils down to a little over one one-thousandth of a cent per word, give or take an iota. Or maybe a smidgen, mite, speck, jot or tittle, for that matter.

And what words.

There’s “barista,” as in one who serves coffee to a Starbucks-struck public. There’s “comb-over” for the hapless gent who believes inventive styling can conceal his baldness.

Funplex is an assemblage of movie houses, game rooms and restaurants; headbanger denotes an aficionado of thumping heavy metal music, while longnecks, well, that’s just beer in a long-necked bottle.

“Dead presidents” means the cash that revelers use to pay for it all, even if they have a “McJob,” or low-paying work.

“Dictionaries are not just a place to find correct spellings and meanings. The story of words is the story of American life,” Merriam-Webster spokesman Arthur Bicknell said yesterday, adding that among books the collegiate dictionary was second only to the Bible in sales.

“We get complaints. People get offended by certain words, and we explain that we are a chronicle of the offender — we didn’t invent them. But we have a responsibility to get them out there,” he said.

But the dictionary has its limits, unlike the brand-new 75th-anniversary Oxford English Dictionary, which weighs in at 20 volumes and 22,000 pages.

“To keep our dictionary manageable, some words have to be kicked out; it’s as simple as that,” Mr. Bicknell said.